


Always a New Year

by GloriousGoblinQueen



Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, M/M, New Year's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-09-18 21:10:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9402992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriousGoblinQueen/pseuds/GloriousGoblinQueen
Summary: Marty and Doc ringing in the new year in the 80s, 50s, and the 1880s.See Chapter 3 end notes for important announcement.





	1. 1985-86

**Author's Note:**

> Tags will be added as needed/necessary.

It’s New Year’s Eve, 1985, and Marty thankfully gets to spend at least part of it with Doc.

* * *

Earlier in the evening, he’d been at home attending some party his parents were throwing. He’d asked as nicely as possible if he could spend the night at Doc’s place, and they let him, provided that he spend at least two hours with their guests before taking off. Two hours didn’t sound that bad, and it was only 8 p.m., so Marty agreed. Of course, in between trying to be a good host and fielding questions about how his studies were going, how he felt about going into his senior year, what college he was going to, and other minutiae like that, he completely lost track of time. It was nearly 11:30 by the time he got free (being sure to say goodbye to Mom and Dad first).

 _Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve_ was playing on the TV when Marty stepped in from the cold. He heard it before he saw it, since the set had been relocated to the dresser near the foot of Doc’s bed. Doc, on the other hand, Marty saw almost immediately. The man was hunched over his worktable, tinkering with another one of his contraptions. He apparently finished up right as Marty stepped a few feet into the garage.

Doc jumped up off his stool and tossed a quick greeting in Marty’s direction before hurrying off to the other side of the garage. Marty watched him flit around the place, which was slightly more of a hot mess than usual, cleaning stuff out of the way. He asked, “Ah, you need some help with all that?”, but Doc just waved him off.

“Go ahead and make yourself at home! I won’t be long.”

* * *

It’s 11:58 p.m., and the countdown’s about to start soon, but Doc’s _still_ rattling around the garage like it’s any other day of the week. So Marty calls out to him to pull up a chair and come join him in ringing in the new year. He hopes like hell that the jumpiness in his voice is all in his head; he really doesn’t need Doc asking questions when he’s _this_ close to freaking out. Doc finally sits down next to him on one of the many stools he’s got laying around the place. Even though having Doc within easy reach is sort of necessary for what he’s got planned, Marty still has to keep himself from startling when Doc takes his seat.

Marty counts down with the folks on the TV under his breath, more to steel his nerves than anything else. When the ball drops and “Auld Lang Syne” starts playing, Marty sits there frozen, like he can’t believe it’s midnight already.

The minutes tick by slowly; Marty thinks he might hear Doc calling his name, but he’s a little too busy trying not to have a coronary to respond.

Doc finally reaches over the arm of the chair, across the short distance between them, and grabs Marty’s chin. He uses just enough pressure to get the boy to turn his head. Marty’s eyes open wide when Doc kisses him, warm and chaste.

“Happy New Year, Future Boy,” he wishes Marty.

It’s New Year’s Day, 1986, a few minutes after midnight, and Marty is completely over the damn moon.


	2. 1955-56

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Doc worries about getting Marty back home before the year's out, Marty worries about how he's going to tell Doc his secret.

Marty didn't need to be good at math to know their plan to harness the power of lightning had an astronomically low chance of being successful. Hell, Doc had even warned him the day before that, despite having calculated and recalculated everything as precisely as possible, if they were so much as a few milliseconds off, the whole plan would be ruined. Even as he floored it towards the power line like he was outrunning the terrorists again, his heart was in in his throat, hoping for a miracle but fully expecting the laws of physics to screw him over. And the crap the DeLorean's faulty starter gave him earlier sure didn't help. No, Marty was all too aware this was a one-in-a-million chance they were taking.

Still, it was a bitter pill to swallow when he skidded to a stop just inches away from the movie theater, having realized the flow of current had _just_ passed him by.

Since that disappointing night, Doc's been wearing himself out looking for an alternative power source for the flux capacitor. He steadfastly ignored the "nuclear option", as he put it, both for safety reasons and the fact that radioactive material wasn't easy to come by (at least, not in the 1950s). He tried whatever he could think of, from complex carbon dioxide generators to electromagnetic dynamos. At one point, Marty had even jokingly suggested Doc try to power the thing off garbage. "It'd be way cheaper," he'd said.

That particular experiment ended in failure and Doc nearly setting the garage on fire (again).

* * *

Their closeness deepened in fits and starts November transitioned into December. This Doc had already grown accustomed to Marty's presence, interacting with him with a familiarity that made him long even more for his home. Still, there were times when Doc pulled back, keeping a small distance between them. Marty suspected it was Doc's guilt at fault; before long, a new year would be coming in, and virtually no progress had been made in getting Marty back home. It also didn't look like a breakthrough would be coming anytime soon. Marty understood how his friend felt, but the hot and cold routine Doc had going made it difficult to read him. That was the last thing Marty needed, since he'd decided to confess all what he'd meant to say that fateful, early October morning, before this whole mess began. If he didn't judge Doc's receptiveness just right, he could end up ruining their friendship before it (technically) began. The awkward rift that would settle between them as long as Marty was living under Doc's roof would be unbearable. Had Marty a better sense of self-preservation, he would've just given up on the whole matter and kept quiet. Then again, he likely wouldn't have met Doc in the first place, either.

* * *

Doc had the radio on, more for background noise than anything. He'd had it on for most of the day while going back and forth between working on formulas and messing around with the time machine schematics. Marty, for the most part, tried to stay out of the way and kept himself busy by playing with Copernicus or taking yet another self-guided tour of the house. He'd tried to help out a little, but after getting a few too many curt responses to his questions, he'd learned his lesson. Besides, most of what Doc was working on went over Marty's head anyway.

As it was the 31st of December, it seemed like a good idea to confess his feelings at the stroke of midnight. After all, it was a holiday, and he was pretty sure Doc wouldn't throw him outdoors on a holiday, no matter how shocked he might be by the news. Of course, since Marty had so thoroughly made up his mind, it felt like the day was dragging on without end. He'd already played a game of chess with Copernicus (which he barely won) and straightened up several stacks of papers and things lying around before looking up at the clock. It wasn't even noon yet.

Fed up with just waiting around like he was headed for the gallows, Marty went to check out what was on the bookshelf. It was filled with titles of varying interest, from auto-mechanics to quantum mechanics, and he scanned around before something caught his eye. He picked it off the shelf, and was going to sit down with it when he realized something: making a love confession to his best friend clear out of the blue _probably_ wasn't going to go over too well.

"Hey Doc," he called out from his spot on the couch. "You're not planning on going out anywhere tonight, are you?"

Doc stared at him for a few moments, then looked down at his work, then back up at Marty. "I don't think I'll be going anywhere anytime soon, Future Boy, not with all this work to be done." He shuffled some of his notes around and muttered, "Not that I _have_ anyplace to be."

Marty nodded to himself, turning his attention back to his book. "Cool, because I've got something important to tell you tonight. Or tomorrow. Well, it'll be midnight, so." He shut his mouth before he could embarrass himself further.

* * *

Sometime around late evening, Doc changed the channel on the radio. A band was playing, led by a "Guy Lombardo" according to the announcer. Marty had a vague recollection of his parents talking about how they used to listen to him when they were younger, but that all seemed like a lifetime ago.

It turned out that deciding to spill his guts was the easy part. Actually figuring out _how_ he'd do it was an exercise in frustration and anxiety. Doc seemed to get especially busy right around 10, having gone to the garage to bring in some part from the DeLorean to work on. Watching Doc write in his notebook, mess around with the _thing_ he'd taken from the DeLorean, and flip madly through the pages of whatever reference book he was using was exhausting, but it gave Marty time to think. He'd gotten himself another book, something by Asimov, and feigned reading it while he ran scenarios through his head, trying for the best way to tell his friend he was very possibly in love with him.

At a quarter to midnight, Marty had finally gotten tired of seeing Doc run himself ragged over a project he wasn't going to finish (not tonight, anyways) and convinced him to take a break. He'd had to practically drag the man over to the couch, but it worked. Marty still hadn't found a way to tell Doc what was on his mind, and it wouldn't be long before the clock struck 12.

Marty was so far in his own head, worrying about what he'd say, how he'd say it, how Doc would take it, so on and so forth, he didn't even hear the countdown. He tuned back in when the band on the radio broke out into the first familiar strains of "Auld Lang Syne". _Time's up, I guess_ , he thought, and he took a deep breath to calm his nerves. "Hey, ah, Doc?" he started, turning to face the man sitting on the couch with him. Whatever else he was going to say died in his throat when he found Doc passed out asleep, head resting on the couch's back.

Marty gaped at him indignantly, just the least little bit offended. He was so mildly offended, in fact, he actually considered shaking Doc awake and making him pay attention before remembering what the man had been working on for most of the day. "Yeah, you've been working on the DeLorean pretty much since you got up. No wonder you're dead to the world now." While he wondered what to do, his eyes darted around the room aimlessly, finally landing on a quilt laid over the back of the armchair. He stared at it for a bit, then sighed and got up off the couch.

He carefully opened the quilt up and spread it over Doc's prone form without waking him up. As disappointed as he was about not being able to confess tonight, he was equally relieved; what's one more day of putting off dumping his feelings out in the open and possibly offending his only hope of getting back home? After realizing there wasn't much else to do around the house, he decided to tuck himself in alongside Doc.

Relief at not having to spill his guts yet had Marty actually feeling tired, but there was one last thing he needed to do before he went to sleep. He looked up at Doc, steeling his nerves yet again, before pecking the object of his affections softly beneath his jawline.

"Happy New Year", he whispered, before resting his face in the crook of Doc's neck and drifting off into a light sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was one of the chapters that gave me hell like you wouldn't believe.


	3. 1885-86

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marty stays warm by the forge while Doc works on a commission for a customer.

That winter had been colder than usual for Hill Valley, and the 31st of December was the coldest day thus far. Marty stood as close to the forge as he dared under the pretense of helping Doc. They both knew he wasn't quite skilled enough yet to do more than grunt work and minor adjustments around the shop. Still, when Marty had followed him out to the workshop offering up all sorts of ways he could assist, Doc just nodded. Doc hadn't yet found the time to fix the draftiness in the house, so he knew firsthand how chilly it could get. It was fine most of the year, especially when the occasional breeze would blow through during the hottest months, but now? Doc was glad this current smithing assignment gave him an excuse to stay close to the forge.

Marty leaned to one side, then the other, trying to get a look at what Doc was working on. The scientist hadn't bothered telling him much about it, and Marty assumed that was because it was such a small job, not really worth talking about. Seeing Doc actually work on it, though, piqued his interest. After unsuccessfully trying to peer around the forge without getting in the way, Marty gave up and just asked him about it. "So, uh, what's that you're working on?" It's a perfectly acceptable question, but he still felt kind of dumb for asking it.

Doc kept his eyes on his work while he answered. "Something for a Mr. Anderson, I think I told you about it the other day. He said he'd intended to get his niece something for Christmas, but it completely slipped his mind, so he figured he'd have something made for her for the new year." He pulled the small item from the fire to check his progress, turning it this way and that. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, Doc plunged the piece back into the forge. "Though I seriously doubt his niece will appreciate a crudely made paperweight."

Marty could tell from the amusement in Doc's voice that the scientist wasn't seriously disparaging his own work, but he was still tempted to speak up. Marty didn't know a damn thing about shoeing horses, but from the praise Doc's repeat customers heaped on him, he figured the man knew what he was doing.

As the night progressed, Marty kept himself busy looking around the workshop, idly messing with various works in progress lying around. Mostly, however, he watched Doc work on his current job. He admired the man's focus, his slow, deliberate manner of working the metal into shape. The flickering firelight threw his face into sharp relief, and the flame's reflection danced in the lenses of his work goggles. Had they been back in the Hill Valley of the 1980s, before all their dallying with the space-time continuum landed them permanently in a foreign era, Marty would've felt ashamed for staring at his friend so intently.

Not now, though. Not after that heart-to-heart they'd had towards the end of November. Instead, he stood where he was and enjoyed the view openly, glad they'd both reached a mutual understanding about how they each felt about the other.

Marty nearly jumped out of his skin when the clock mounted on the wall over one of the workbenches started chiming. A quick look told him it was midnight; he hadn't realized they'd been out here that long.

Doc was more composed, barely flinching before he backed away from the forge. He glanced over his shoulder at the clock, then did a double-take when he realized what time it was. He even lifted his goggles up and squinted, just to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

"Great Scott, is it midnight already? I didn't think this little thing would take quite so long." He examined the paperweight again before dunking it in the nearby barrel of water to cool down. Then, he set it aside on one of his workbenches and started putting out the fire in the forge. "Well, it's nearly done; I'll just have to get up early to put the finishing touches on it. Then, it should be ready for Mr. Anderson's pick-up tomorrow."

Without needing to be asked, Marty helped put all the work tools back in their rightful places. As he cleaned up, he thought about how fortunate it was they hadn't had a bunch of work dumped on them for the holiday. As much as he hoped they'd get to spend most of Saturday in each other's company, he knew they really needed to work on patching up the draftier parts of their house.

Doc reached past him to grab the keys to the workshop so he could lock up. Marty was so distracted thinking about the repairs they had coming that he almost didn't notice the sly kiss brushed against his cheek when Doc pulled back.

"By the way, Marty, Happy New Year." He said it so casually, like he was talking about the weather, but the smile on his face when he thought Marty wasn't looking said he was feeling anything but.

Marty pressed his hand to the spot, just _knowing_ he was blushing like crazy. He left so Doc could lock up the workshop, making no effort to hide his smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although this work was originally meant to have 4 chapters, I'm cutting it off at 3 for now. It stands as a complete work as-is, and keeping it open for a chapter that may or may not ever come was nagging at me. There might be a fourth chapter in the future, but for now, please enjoy what I have here.


End file.
